Gustavus Vasa eBook

“The varied
pleasures of yon’ smiling plain
Would feebly image Joy’s
eternal reign.
As that bright prospect, still
to beauty true,
Presents new charms at every
varied view,
Here towns and waving forests
rise reveal’d,
There the blue deep, and here
the golden field;
Such and so boundless are
the joys decreed
To those, whom Truth from
all their chains has freed.
Nor time shall limit, nor
dull space control
The winged motions of th’
immortal soul.
From star to star to spread
her restless wing,
Learn each dread law, and
trace each mighty spring;
To mix with angels, and renew
the hours
Of earthly friendship in celestial
bowers;
The Source of All, undazzled,
to survey,
His triumphs join, and his
commands obey:—­
To span Futurity with raptured
sight,
Age after age interminably
bright,
While with one tranquil all-enlightening
beam,
The past, the present, and
the future gleam:—­
Still, as the joyful ages
run their race,
Progressive glories ripening
as they pass,
With new perfections, new
desires, to shine,
Her will reflected by the
will divine:—­
To see new suns arise, and
see their flame
Lost and extinct in night,
herself the same:—­
Such the soul’s hopes;
and such the blessings given
To Virtue’s sons,—­the
brightest stars of heaven!

“Oft, ev’n
on earth, by Heaven’s unfathom’d doom,
She breaks thro’ her
dark fortune’s circling gloom,
And thro’ the dim-dissolving
cloud of woe
Refulgent mounts, and gilds
the world below.
Pale Envy pines, and sickens
in the dust,
And gazing nations learn that
Heaven is just.

“Such are
the truths thy vision would relate,
And such the secret of thy
doubtful fate.

“Go, then—­thy
God has fix’d thy future doom,
And light and transient are
thy woes to come:
Those sorrows past, ev’n
Earth has joys in store;
And Heaven expects thee on
her happy shore.
Go—­and, by chilling
grief no more oppress’d,
Hold firm thy heart—­to
stand, is to be bless’d!”

Quick-glancing
from his sight the Seraph sped,
And all the dream in gay confusion
fled.
Soft o’er the wave the
summer-breezes sigh’d,
The moon play’d quivering
on the restless tide.
He rose, and now with new
ideas fraught,
Revolv’d the vision
in his alter’d thought;
An eye of meek contrition
upward cast,
And stretch’d in lonely
prayer, bewail’d the past;
Traced all his years, and
with a tranquil eye
Exulting scann’d his
promised destiny;
Then steer’d his bark,
with Providence his guide,
To realms unknown, and oceans
yet untried.